Who built how many?

This thread is relatively promising, except it is missing some ingredients.

Unless I am mistaken, nobody has mentioned GRD (ostensibly the follow-on to Lotus Components in that the principals all left Chapman and set up on their own). There are other absentees e.g. Ensign, Modus Argo, etc., etc.

(Sorry for the edit - new laptop and not used to the smaller keyboard).

Macon Race Cars was a constructor of Formula Fords. They also produced some Formula B and Formula Two cars. Rights to the marque name belong to Peter Alexander (d.b.a. PA Motorsports) who supplies spare parts. Alexander puts the total number of Macon racecars produced at ~40 cars.

This is a massive task surely?
Connaught springs to mind and I recall seeing a 'Syracuse' under a dust sheet in the corner of a workshop a few years ago, the identity given away by a glipse of a Dunlop wheel not covered by the sheet. When I enquired which car it was, I was told that it was number 7 of the 6 produced by the factory!
Good luck.
Tony

No numbers, sorry, but off the top of my head:AutodynamicsAutoresearch (David Brun-designed, same as ADF?)CaldwellChaparralCheetahCobraDulonFerrariFrisbeeLedaMckeeMcRaeProphetRiley & ScottScarabSchkeeSpiceTruesportsTigaWinklemanZink

We're up to 36 marques already! I think the list could easily be expanded to over a hundred. The list will never list all marques, but I think it's still an interesting project.

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Great news today for the Lola marque! In all the press reports and announcements, surely someone will try to put a number on that glorious company's total production. IF YOU SEE A PRODUCTION ESTIMATE FOR LOLA, PLEASE POST HERE.

I should have some images of the Can Am car when it ran at Mosport all those years ago. A lasting memory of that car is that it was "porposing" in a serious manner as it went down the front straight. Not a pretty sight.

Don't hold your breath waiting for images of the Can Am car as there are a lot of more important images to deal with first.

Connaught springs to mind and I recall seeing a 'Syracuse' under a dust sheet in the corner of a workshop a few years ago, the identity given away by a glipse of a Dunlop wheel not covered by the sheet. When I enquired which car it was, I was told that it was number 7 of the 6 produced by the factory!

I can't offer more than a quick comment that B7 was one of the cars in the Connaught sale, the catalogue of which is an appendix in Johnny Johnson's book. B2, B3, B5 & B6 were also listed in that sale as was B4 (pencilled in the catalogue) and B1 certainly existed. Identities got confused later, but so what?

I can't offer more than a quick comment that B7 was one of the cars in the Connaught sale, the catalogue of which is an appendix in Johnny Johnson's book. B2, B3, B5 & B6 were also listed in that sale as was B4 (pencilled in the catalogue) and B1 certainly existed. Identities got confused later, but so what?

B7 was the last car built by the factory and was bought by Bernie Ecclestone at the closing down auction (along with B3) eventually it ended up with Paul Morgan of Ilmor who displayed it at Donington and now belongs to his son & daughter and Bernie now has the car built from the remains of B1 (the burnt chassis was also sold at the closing auction).The later cars are:B8 built by Stephen Langton on a replica chassis and belongs to Josh Sadler.B9 is our car built on a chassis that was sold at the closing auction to Dudley Gahagan and completed with original bits from the Langtons.B10 has been built up over many years by Spencer Longland and Roger Hart on a Langton replica chassis.These are the numbers allocated to them by Duncan Rabagliati.

Strangely the one-off C-type was numbered C8 when C1 would have made more sense.

Does the seven cars being discussed represent all Connaught racecars or a subset? Their Formula One cars only? Obviously Connaught built full-tilt racecars. They also built some street cars, for a combined production of ~27 according to the book Standard Guide to British Sports Cars by Johnny Johnson.

Does the seven cars being discussed represent all Connaught racecars or a subset? Their Formula One cars only? Obviously Connaught built full-tilt racecars. They also built some street cars, for a combined production of ~27 according to the book Standard Guide to British Sports Cars by Johnny Johnson.

The third-to-last paragraph on the page starts: "The Connaught sports/racing car debuted at the Silverstone racecourse in June 1949. The first road going model appeared the following year."

There were 7 x B-type F1 cars plus the 1 x C-type F1 car.Prior to that they built the A type F2 cars of which there were at least 10There were 2 x ALSR sports cars based on the F2 car.And the earlier L-type sports cars.

Some of us are currently excising ourselves about early Cooper numbers, not least about exactly what (and when ) constitutes each Mark No. But there are some numbers that would appear to be better than Duncan gives, and increase quantities.

1948: I am aware of chassis plates as high as 20 (including high teens). Early 1949 reports suggest two batches of a dozen each were built (some doubts on that, though), so let's say c.20
1949: (T7 & T9). Again, plates go to 33 (several Australian chassis up there. This broadly tallies with the number of cars we see around and about.
1950: (T11 & T12). Last plate seems to be 55 (actually the prototype Mk V), with Australian chassis up to 54.
So about 107, plus two prototypes = 109 official plates for 500s and 500-style cars to the end of 1950. As an aside, it seems to me that factory exports all seem to have plates (perhaps because it was easily traceable?), but there are myths and legends about innumerable 'midnight deliveries' to avoid purchase tax, and there were certainly some builds that either never got plates, or got them late. It explicitly excludes upgrades, where most cars were magically Mk IVs by the time they were advertised for sale.

1951: I haven't seen anything to suggest the official 60-odd is too far wrong (although there seem to be quite a lot more than the eight stretch chassis running in 100cc format)
1952: My records aren't good enough, but this was a major redesign and a lot of drivers upgraded. 40-50 feels about right though.
1953: Ditto, but as this was a very small performance upgrade, sales seem to be much lower. Perhaps 30 worldwide, excluding a number of chassis that were upgraded from Mk VI
So a ballpark of 130-140 for the three 'mid-period' chassis types.

1954: Chassis plates run to the 40, but I believe there were a lot more - a lot of British racers upgraded for 1954 and a healthy number are seen on the hills (1100s) and across Europe. Guess 50+
1955: Also very popular, this time particularly for exports. Most leading British racers upgraded, and a lot of cars went to America, the Antipodes, etc. Guess 40-50
1956: Sales slowed a bit, but British sales remained strong. Perhaps up to 40 at a stretch.
1957 - 1959: Sales slow quickly as interest is waning and stocks of old Mk VIII-X are good. I've seen nothing to stretch the official records of 19/6/4.
So c.160-170 of the later chassis. However it's notable how few chassis plates or records survive from the busy 1954-56 years. It is possible that chassis upgrades (theoretically difficult) were more common than estimated.

All that gives a slightly higher 'officially declared for tax purposes' figure of a bit over 400 500-style cars, including various specials and the cars built as 1100s. You can then start arguing about ghost chassis, duplicate plates, and faithful replicas, but that should only be tackled with a pint to hand...

Those are my estimates, but I'd welcome any criticism or better evidence.

Cool. I've updated the Cooper estimate. I also edited the first post to include a list of nineteen other constructors mentioned in this thread. Can we fill in production numbers for these firms to take the grand total from 38 to 57?

I wouldn't restrict the list to single seaters. Can-Am cars for example were certainly purpose-built for racing. On the other hand, I don't believe we should include cars that were originally designed/built for public roads and then converted into racecars.

There may be 10,000 MGB racecars in the world - I love them as much as anyone - but for the purposes of this thread I probably wouldn't include any of them here - probably not even for example the "long-nose" MGBs specially styled by the works for Le Mans (one of which won the "Best British Car" trophy at Le Mans in 1964.)

From 2003 through 2008 the MG brand was once again seen at Le Mans. However, those "MG" cars were actually designed and built under contract by Lola. Lola gets credit as the constructor.

MG built at least one or two racecars for other marques. After the success of the EX181 streamliner (which Stirling Moss and Phil Hill drove to multiple speed records), in 1959 MG was commissioned to design and build a speed record car for the Austin-Healey division. The words "Austin Healey Sprite" were painted on the side of the EX219 streamliner, but it was 99% percent MG. In post 47 I estimated MG's production of purpose built racecars at 146. Let's raise that to 147!

Way back in post #3, Art Tidesco suggested a number of Lotus. IMHO, the number is too low because Art added up Lotus open-wheelers. The Lotus Eleven is an interesting case-study because it was designed to be racecar but was also offered in a street version. I think we should count "Le Mans" and "Club" Elevens as racecars and leave out the "Sports" variant even though some Eleven Sports were ultimately raced. The Lotus 15 and 19 model cars should all be counted as racecars, right?

Way back in post #3, Art Tidesco suggested a number of Lotus. IMHO, the number is too low because Art added up Lotus open-wheelers. The Lotus Eleven is an interesting case-study because it was designed to be racecar but was also offered in a street version. I think we should count "Le Mans" and "Club" Elevens as racecars and leave out the "Sports" variant even though some Eleven Sports were ultimately raced. The Lotus 15 and 19 model cars should all be counted as racecars, right?

Is this opening a can of worms?

For example Cooper made the Bobtail and all the versions of the Monaco. Chevron, Crosley, MG and many of the other manufacturers also made sports racers. In the case of Lotus, should the Elite (Lotus 14) be considered? It was designed as a competition car that you could also use on the road while the Elan was designed as a road car (apart from the 26R) the Renault powered Europa was intended as a road car while the Ford version was intended for racing, etc.

Better to restrict the nuimbers to open wheel cars as it's far more clear cut.

LMP-1 was a racecar produced in two versions ("LMP-1 Roadster-S" and "LMP01 Evos") - ~8 cars built.

Summing up the numbers above - ~376 cars built to date

As I understand it, some of the cars within this tally were branded "Van Diemen" at time of production and others were branded "G-Force" - but Van Diemen and G-Force were distinctly different marques which fell into insolvency and were acquired by Élan. The numbers here reflect cars built in U.S.A. by Élan employees, versus cars built in U.K. by employees of the older marques. Right? I came across this information while trying to pin down a number for the original Van Diemen company, which produced several thousand Formula Fords back in the day.